


Five Things You Know, and the One Thing You Don't

by Choice_Bit_of_Callico



Category: Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020), Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:00:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25629346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Choice_Bit_of_Callico/pseuds/Choice_Bit_of_Callico
Summary: Jack knows five things about himself, but there is one thing that he doesn't know about Miss Fisher.
Relationships: Phryne Fisher & Jack Robinson, Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Comments: 28
Kudos: 109





	1. First

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [five things you know and the one thing you don’t](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/659230) by bedlamsbard. 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "first. she touches you and you light on fire. your wrist blazes where her fingers meet your skin. the burns don’t show, but it’s hard to breathe with ash in your lungs. it’s so hard to breathe. you’re suffocating daily."
> 
> Mentions of episodes 1x13 and 2x02

Jack had had her in his arms not long ago, but it wasn’t quite the same as her reaching for him. When she takes his hand at her kitchen table, he almost forgets to breathe. It is warm and soft. Her life, that she has lived to the very hilt, pulses beneath the skin. He admires her for that - her resilience, her boldness, and her ability to shuck the restraints of what is expected of her. He looks at her and feels the electricity crackling. He knows that she finds him attractive, but to flirt with any sort of fondness is one-sided on his part. 

He’s known for some time he has feelings for her. Are they love? No, not yet, but they are something mighty and turbulent, indescribable, confusing, and completely against his own will. Not for lack of trying on his part. He's attempted to lock them up tight within his chest. Now that he is free from the confines of vows, they are trying to break free like wild horses. 

He knows he can only stall the inevitable for so long.

She rations her touches. Not the flirting ones, he's thinking of the ones that leave marks on his skin no one but he can see or feel. The touches where he thinks, maybe she may feel something for him too. She is too fierce and untamable, and he too dour and serious. He knows nothing can happen between them that won't end in his destruction. 

When she takes his hand in her parlor to read his palm, he feels his heart hammering in his rib cage. His lungs feel as though they are filling with embers and ash, and he finds he doesn’t mind one bit that he can’t breathe. A long look hangs between them. For a moment he thinks about ignoring all the warning signs and kissing her anyway. He changes his mind as he leans in. 

Is that disappointment on her face? 

No, he is mistaking. Jack reminds himself, that there is no hope for fools. 

The burning in his lungs eases tonight, but God knows he is suffocating anyway.


	2. Second

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "second. it hurts to watch her. she shines. she’s brighter than the sun, she’s too beautiful for your eyes. it’s hard to look at her. it’s even harder to look away from her. you’re going blind."
> 
> Mentions of 2x05

Jack has come to realize that his attraction to Miss Phryne Fisher has only become more intense over time. It has transformed from the warm morning sun, into a bright, blazing inferno of the high noon star, filling him with heat and marring his vision. 

She is positively radiant in anything that she does. She draws people into her orbit like the sun; warm, resplendent, and with the potential to kill if exposed for long enough. As much as he’s tried to squeeze his eyes closed to the light, he too is pulled in, circling around her. He tries to maintain distance so as to not get burned, but that is becoming harder and harder to avoid. 

She is magnificent. Her beauty does not come from her looks alone, no, it comes in her cleverness and kindness. It comes from her being able to match him step for step, or to be dashing in front, full speed ahead. In the moments that he lets his guard down, and allows himself to bask in her, he feels like he's going mad or blind, or both. 

It takes all his willpower not to give in; to be drawn in like an asteroid, to crash and combust on her surface, leaving him a smoldering pile of ashes in her wake. 

His temptation heightened tenfold by the dress she is wearing tonight. To have her standing on the stairs, mere strides from her bedroom, what was left of his fragile self-restraint was threatening to crack. 

When she offers him a nightcap, he knows that it is a loaded proposition. He assumes she is merely offering him up to her boudoir for sacrifice, to be devoured, as she has done to so many others. 

He almost accepts anyway. He closes his eyes for a moment, to gather his resolve. He thinks about taking her right there on the steps. Fuck her like she wants, consequences be dammed, he thinks bitterly. Get it over with and end your exquisite torment. 

She is a supernova, exploding with energy from the inside out. The result is her blinding, spectacular light that threatens to rob him of his vision and his senses. 

This time he manages to look away. If only to spare his eyesight and his heart - at least for another day. 

He meant what he said. That dress would have been lethal.


	3. Third

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "third. your ears are tuned to her voice. you could pick her out in a sea of thousands. her voice makes pretty singers who sing pretty songs sound dull. her voice makes everything else sound ugly."
> 
> Mention of episode 2x11

Jack feels that the gods must be playing a cruel trick on him. For all her other gifts; beauty, charm, brilliance, and the largest heart he’s ever known, it seems extraordinarily unfair that she should also be gifted the voice of a songbird. 

He’s always found her voice to be equal parts soothing and exasperating. Her voice could weave a spell over his heart. It could wound him with its recklessness, and it could, without a doubt, arouse. 

He’s been privileged to hear her melodious laughter, however rare it can be. His heart has been subjected to her voice when it was weighted heavy with grief, with memories, and choked with her tears. He’s heard her be cross, and he’s been on the receiving end of that temper. Every octave has pushed him closer to the precipice of loving her. 

He’s confident he could pick her out of a lineup of a thousand lady detectives from her voice alone. He could never mistake the sultry tones she uses only when saying his name. 'Jack' sounded unlike anything else when it rolled off her tongue. The way it passed through her lips gave meaning to his name. 

The rattling of the beads on her dress as she maneuvers behind him, makes his heart skip a beat or two. When she slides in next to him on the piano bench, her nearness seeps into his veins like a warm whiskey. As he plays, a small smile forms on his lips. He had a hope that he could turn the tables, and fluster her for once. 

He made the gamble but found he had miscalculated - she is unflappable. When she started singing, her voice headed straight to his heart. Her closeness made him dizzy, her sweet-sounding singing made him drunk. His world was becoming tilted. 

When they finished their duet, her with that devilish smile playing on her lips, Jack Robinson knew that soon the ropes would be cut, and he would be left to plummet. 

He welcomed the free fall.


	4. Fourth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "fourth. the color of her eyes is blue enough to drown in. she is turning you into a clichéd love-wrecked being. you’re drowning, always sinking. down, down, down."
> 
> Mention of episode 2x12

It had been over before it had even begun he now realizes. One stubborn woman trampling over his crime scene had led him here. There were no other paths for him, and he can no longer ignore her siren calls. He is lost to those blue depths, swimming towards her jagged rocks that could wound him. His head bobbing under her turbulent waves, never to find himself again. He accepts this as his ultimate fate. 

Eyes are really windows to the soul, and hers bore everything if you only knew what to look for. He fancied himself an expert in this. He notices the twinkle that appears in them when she teases him. He heeds the mischievous glint that emerges when she has an idea that’s likely going to cause him grief. He hates to see the dark, grey storm clouds appear, threatening to spill salty tears; he would gladly kiss them away. He would also like to believe that the looks of pure adoration he aims her way are reflected in kind. 

He knows his eyes are playing tricks on him. Her heart was locked in a gilded, steel cage, and only the bravest men (or the stupidest) would dare to dive into her deepest depths to find the key. 

Was he just such a man? 

Jack Robinson has been in love for quite some time now. He doesn’t know how it happened, or when precisely. She snuck upon his heart and stole it away like a thief in the night. 

He sits, in the dark, outside of her home, cursing himself for his stupidity, for letting himself get caught up in the undertow. 

Jack holds his breath and dives under. Drowning was a distinct possibility, but the reward would be worth the risk. As he knocks on her door, he considers bolting into the darkness. Coward, he tells himself. No, he won’t run. Not like when he thought he had lost her forever. Not like all the other times, she got a little too close. No. He could no longer hide his feelings, though he suspects, he hasn’t been concealing them in the least. 

When she opens her home to his light tapping, he is momentarily caught off guard. She is stripped of her makeup, her armor of red lipstick, her beautiful clothes. Barefaced and in a robe. She’s just Phryne. 

He feels dumbstruck. 

She allows him entrance. He has just come from being in Rosie’s presence and was reminded that being with her was like a day at the beach. All shallow waters, and gentle waves. Perfectly adequate, if not a little dull. 

Standing in front of Phryne Fisher, feels like being in the eye of a hurricane. She is electrifying, beautiful, and has the power to destroy him. While he stands staring into those blue eyes, he can feel the rest of the world being torn apart all around him. He no longer cares about the damage. 

His heart beats double time, and he hears the wild wind of blood coursing through his veins. He leans in to end his suffering and... is promptly jerked back to shore by one Prudence Stanely. 

The storm dies down, the waters appear calm on the surface, but he knows his message has broken through. He can see it in those eyes.

Whether or not she’s ready for it, is an answer he won’t receive tonight. 

But Jack Robinson would wait. Content to crash among her waves for all of time.


	5. Fifth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "fifth. you know her. you love her. through a thousand lifetimes, across millions of stars, you’d find her, you’d never leave her. you love her, till death do you part."

He loves her. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to hide from spectators - it shows up in touches, in looks, shared glances. In the beginning, he retreated from her, as though she would burn him. Now love and adoration for her had taken up residence in his heart. 

She tells him that she will be leaving Melbourne. She doesn't know how long for. Long enough to save her parent’s marriage. He feels a hot rage creep up his spine at the unfairness of it, for her, for him. For them. She has always had to carry the weight of others' mistakes. This was more heaviness on her shoulders, already hulking with guilt and sorrow. How he longed to lighten the load if she would only let him. 

Jack Robinson was not an impulsive man, but that morning he cannot bear to have her leave without her knowing how he feels. He grabs his keys and drives at speeds that would have shocked Miss Fisher herself. When he arrives he sees the aircraft with its propeller already spinning, he slams the car into park and takes off in a run. When he sees her mirror him, his heart pumping as if it will break through its ribcage prison. 

He would gladly hand it to her still beating. 

He had every intention of telling her when he set off this morning. To tell her that she’s captured him: heart, mind, body, soul, and any other part of him she wanted. He decides against it. He does not want to burden her further. He doesn't want her to carry around his feelings too. If she doesn’t love him back, he’ll only be adding to that weight on her shoulders. 

As always though, she surprises him. 

The kiss at the restaurant was warm, soft, and tinged with her fear and anxiousness. It was a distraction; given unwillingly, he had always felt a twinge of guilt at taking the liberty. This kiss, in the middle of an airfield, impulsive, but years in the making launches him into orbit. It is full of pent up passion, and unspoken feelings. It has made their parting bittersweet. Jack doesn’t want to, but he lets her go. He knows they’ll see each other again because they’re drawn to one another, like a star into a black hole. Once you’ve been pulled in, there’s no chance you’ll ever get out again. 

She had said to come after her. Jack Robinson was sturdy, old fashioned, rooted in place like a tree, but for her, he would cut out all the roots and follow her. 

My god, did he love her, and he’s beginning to suspect that she might just love him too.


	6. Sixth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "sixth. she loves you, too."
> 
> Mentions of episodes 2x07, 3x03, and Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears.

Phryne Fisher was no fool for love. It certainly had done her no favors in the past, so how had it come to pass that she was in an absolute free fall for a dour detective that always seemed to obstruct her path? 

She had tried to banish her sentiments like the Titans, locking them tightly away, refusing to become a victim once again to the power of intimacy. She had run through a bevy of men, hoping that the feelings would fizzle out if she fucked enough. That plan had backfired in spectacular fashion when her traitorous lips had panted his name with another man still inside of her. 

She had tried to distance herself. She had been reckless, sometimes indifferent, and even callous with his heart, and she had almost lost him three times now because of it. Once to another woman, and twice to the specter of death - the prospect of her departure from this world too much for him to bear. The thought of a man that loved her so deeply, that he’d rather not have her in his life at all than to watch her throw herself so willingly in front of the reaper’s scythe, would have agitated her as an animal cornered. Now, the very notion flooded her veins with the warmth of rich alcohol - heady and dizzying. 

The Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher, who claimed she could commit herself to no man, presently found the thought of Detective Inspector Jack Robinson slipping through her fingers, drove a divide in her heart so deep that it would have made the Grand Canyon look like a pothole. 

If he couldn’t bear it, neither could she. When she lures him into her tent, it is with the intention to give him the one thing she could trust no one else with the care of. 

He beats her to the punch - just this once. Confessing what she has known, but has been unwilling to accept - loving someone was not a death sentence, it was not the end of her independence, it was the start of another extraordinary adventure. 

Phryne thinks about how long he’s had her heart, a fact he clearly seems unaware of. Some detective he is, she muses with tenderness. 

Jack can only revel in her admission and admire her for her jab at his detective skills, because if he had been paying attention to the signs along the way, he would have known they all pointed at him, and that she loved him too.

**Author's Note:**

> Am I a complete moron for starting another WIP? Probably. But dammit if I wasn't inspired by this work (linked at the top), so I couldn't stop myself.  
> This is the start of only my second fic, so I hope you all enjoy it!


End file.
